


Italy, the Amalfi Coast

by goldfinch



Category: Luther (TV)
Genre: Gen, Murder, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 16:03:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2818103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldfinch/pseuds/goldfinch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alice is wearing a black swimsuit, a one piece, and the clean lines of her are shark-sleek and deadly but her smile’s all for him.</p><p>Italy, the Amalfi coast. There's blood in the water.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Italy, the Amalfi Coast

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OperaOtaku](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OperaOtaku/gifts).



Alice is wearing a black swimsuit, a one piece, and the clean lines of her are shark-sleek and deadly but her smile’s all for him.

Italy. The Amalfi coast.

She’s been laid out on a lawn chair while he sprawls at her feet, building sand castles with great lazy sweeps of his arms. He can see a few little islands in the distance, half submerged in the white glitter of sun on water, can feel Alice watching him until she rises, downs the rest of her drink, and strides past him toward the sea.

“I’ll race you,” she says, stepping into the water. Her voice, even then, is velvet-soft and dangerous; so’s her smile. “Come on. It’ll be _fun_.”

 

 

 

 

He hadn’t known what he’d expected, quitting his job to come with her. Where? He’d asked on the bridge, what feels like a lifetime ago. Anywhere we like, she’d told him, mouth close enough to kiss, and then taken him by the hand. It’s been a lot of nothing, these past few weeks, all the vacation days he’s owed come due once the department’s stopped paying him. All in all it’s been easier than he’d expected. Leaving, that is. He’d always thought he’d be a copper till he died, but in the end it had been as easy as shedding a coat, as letting it slip through his fingers.

All the rooms at the hotel are named after flowers. Lily, Iris, Orchid. Big hot-house flowers, none of which would survive a week in London. This whole place has a dream-like clarity to it, nothing but water and sand, clean and bright. Soft white sheets of linen sigh in the bar's doorway. 

“Scotch,” he tells the bartender, slapping the wood. “Alice?”

Coming back from the loo, still patting her hands dry: “A vodka tonic, if you please.”

He’s only taken a sip though, and Alice hasn’t even touched hers, when he hears the yelling. It’s Italian, so of course he doesn’t understand what the man’s saying, but although the words might be meaningless the tone is clear. Fear, urgency, alarm. He’s heard it before.

“What now,” he asks, just as the man stumbles through the doorway, tripping on the curtains. It’s one of the hotel staff; he’s wearing the hat, and the pin, the funny little waistcoat. There’s blood on his hands, across his mouth where it looks like he tried to wipe his face and forgot. Not the attacker, then.

Behind him, past the pulled-down curtains, John sees a man’s body dragged mostly up onto the deck, and when he glances at Alice he finds she’s already looking back, face a blank mask that splits and separates into a smile as he watches, warm and dark and pleased.

A mystery.

 

 

 

 

She doesn’t burn, Alice. She’s like a black hole, sucking up all the light and giving none of it back, neat white teeth and a slow sharp smile going under, pulling him down. Even on the beach, stepping carefully past the edges of the blood trail - “Quite the _blee_ der, this one, wasn’t he,” - she radiates a pale quiet, a watchfulness like waiting, a predator coiled to strike. And yet he knows she could wait forever, hands clean; killing isn’t a compulsion for her, however much she appreciates violence, however often she will kill someone over letting them live, given the choice. 

The blood runs from the deck all the way down the beach, into the water where the waves have washed all trace of it away. Water is trackless. The sea remembers nothing.

John’s just getting ready to speak, arranging the scene in his mind, going over variables - there’s only one road along the coast, so a road block shouldn’t be difficult; the hotel has names for all the guests - when something stops him. The light slants hard and bright into his eyes, and for a half second he’s disoriented, light-headed. Heatstroke? He’s been out in the sun awhile. But no, he steadies, is left squinting into the sun, the tips of Alice’s hair lit up like she’s aflame. He might be in Italy, but he’s standing just shy of a bloodstain and there’s a man dead in a morgue thirty miles away and is any of this any different, really? Isn’t this just the same as what he left behind in London?

“No,” he says, shakes his head. “Nope. Changed my mind.”

“No?” Alice turns toward him. “But there’s a grieving family somewhere out there.” She sounds almost surprised. “A widow. _Children_ , John. This is a _crime_.”

“No murders. I’ll do anything else, domestics, thefts, fucking - noise complaints. But no more murders.”

Alice blinks at him. In the light her shoulders are pale and undirtied as they ever were in London, but there’s something like understanding in her eyes as well. “Well," she says. "Alright then."

 

 

 

 

That evening, on their balcony, Alice presses herself against his side and hands him a glass of wine. She has her own glass in the opposite hand, taking neat little sips until there’s enough to down in a mouthful. John can see the crime tape from here. The ends are fluttering a little, flags in the breeze off the Tyrrhenian. A man bled out there earlier today, not fifty feet from where they’re standing, but there’s little trace of that now. High tide came in, hours ago, and rinsed everything clean. 

“I’d have done it myself, you know,” Alice says, “only I knew you would have disapproved.”

“What, killed someone?”

“Presented you with an opportunity. Now I know you’re here to stay.”

He doesn’t say anything to that, just huffs a little laugh and turns back to look at the water. He doesn’t remember turning to face her, but somehow he had. A planet in the orbit of a dark star. Or is it the other way around? He’s not sure anymore. Maybe they’re binary stars. Tandem. He’ll follow her lead if she follows his. 

“There’s a chapel just down the road from here,” she says eventually, “with a lovely triptych of the Ascension.” She’s probably going for idly, but John knows by now that even her offhand comments are calculated. He sips at his wine.

“Are you suggesting we steal it?”

“John. We have to occupy ourselves somehow - and it was a Botticelli. Early work, but still. Usually I go for more modern pieces but this one quite struck me.”

“We'll go see it tomorrow, then,” he says, finally settling an arm over her shoulders. Her hair smells like vanilla and something darker, sweeter, maybe orchids. There’s a small dark splash on the sleeve of her blouse, just past her wrist, that he doesn't look too hard at. There’s no pull in it for him anymore. The sea is dark but the sand is clean and soft-looking, and this is him choosing, again, to walk away.

It feels right.


End file.
